


If I'm going to die, I'll die for you

by magicalIdiot



Series: A Reimagined Verdant Wind [5]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Dimitri is an oblivious fool who runs from his problems and everyone else is too stressed to notice, For a dimiclaude fic Claude is mysteriously absent and I am sorry, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Hallucinations, Hanahaki Disease, Hurt/Comfort, Imprisonment, M/M, Racism, Rated Mature for violence/torture, Slow Burn, This is Hanahaki and we're here to yearn, Torture, Who let all these 20-something-year-olds run Fodlan anyway because that was a dumb plan, there's no sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:07:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26353183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicalIdiot/pseuds/magicalIdiot
Summary: Dimitri realizes he's in love with Claude, and is determined to take this information with him to his grave. But first, he needs to help with Claude's dream of making a better future for Fodlan.
Relationships: Background Hilda/Marianne - Relationship, Background Sylvain/Felix, Background everyone is happy except Dimitri, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan, background Dedue/Ashe - Relationship, background Ignatz/Raphael, background Leonie/Lorenz
Series: A Reimagined Verdant Wind [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1799512
Comments: 37
Kudos: 102
Collections: Bread Eaters





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to Finding Your Way Home, the first fic in this series, and is specifically a direct sequel to Where One Love Flowers, Another Love Blooms, the fourth entry in this series. If you don't at least read Where One Love Flowers, you will probably be a little lost, as this first chapter happens directly after it!

It isn’t until after the wedding, and after the reception, late at night, that Dimitri is finally able to escape the company of others. His throat is itchy now, and although he hasn’t coughed up any more flower petals, he isn’t taking any risks. As stealthily as he can, he sneaks off to the library, sticking to the shadows as he walks through the monastery’s rebuilt halls. The library is blissfully empty when he arrives, so he is able to take his time and walk through the rows of bookshelves. Lysithea and Cyril had put a lot of effort into reorganizing the library and making it easier to research the previously forbidden parts of Fodlan’s history. Thanks to their hard work, Dimitri is able to find a section labeled “Illnesses”, under which he finds a single book describing uncommon magical illnesses and ailments. It takes a moment of flipping through the book by dim torchlight before he finds what he is looking for:

“Hanahaki Disease. A disease suffered by those who are overcome with a love so strong that it dominates their waking thoughts. The disease feeds on unrequited love, causing flowers to bloom in the victim’s lungs. If the unrequited love persists, the flowers will eventually smother the victim’s breathing pathways, causing them to suffocate to death. To avoid death, the victim must either lose their unrequited feelings or have them reciprocated by the subject of their love.”

Dimitri’s heart pounds in his chest as he closes the book slowly and places it back on the shelf. In love? Is he in love? He thinks about the way his chest aches upon seeing Marianne and Hilda kiss. Perhaps it would be nice to have something like that, but he hardly deserves it yet. He still has so much work to do, so much left to atone for. He wants to be a better person, the kind of person that Claude deserves--

Dimitri coughs again, and another flower petal floats down into his hand.

Claude. Dimitri would have characterized his feelings as admiration for Claude, for the way he strove unyieldingly towards his ideal world, for the way he helps everyone around them, for the way he builds bridges between people. And yet, when he thinks about the ways Claude has always been there for him, how Claude rearranged his whole plan to make room for Dimitri in Almyra, how Claude dealt with months and months of suspicion because he brought someone from  _ Fodlan _ back home with him--

Oh Goddess. Maybe he  _ is _ in love.

Dimitri isn’t quite at the point where he values his life enough to fear death. He isn’t actively seeking death-- not like during the war, when his only goals were to avenge the dead and then join them. But the idea of dying for another person does not scare him in the way that it should. Maybe it’s because there’s no way that he could ever, ever be with Claude without making it much harder for him to legitimize his rule in Almyra. And why would Claude want to be with him, anyway? Dimitri doesn’t have anything unique to offer Claude that he couldn’t easily get from someone else.

As Dimitri walks back to his guest room, he thinks about how happy Claude had seemed tonight, hearing about the work everyone had done to stabilize Fodlan. He wants to be the reason Claude smiles like that. If he’s going to die, then he’s going to use the time he has left to push for Claude’s dream. 

Except Dimitri knows what it’s like to lose the people you care about, and he doesn’t want to be the reason his friends feel devastated by his death, so he’ll have to stay alive as long as possible. He can knock out two birds with one stone if he stays in Fodlan and works alongside his friends, helping them with all the things they’re doing to bring Fodlan together-- Ashe and Dimitri in Duscur, Ingrid, Annette, and Mercedes here in the monastery, Sylvain and Felix in Faerghus, Bernadetta and Ferdinand in Enbarr. Ah, except Dimitri probably should stay away from Empire and Faerghus lands; if he’s recognized, he might start conflict. So he’ll ask the people working in the Alliance and see where he can start helping there, and then work his way around Fodlan as time passes. Perhaps he can grow out his facial hair so he won’t be as well recognized.

Dimitri falls asleep, determined to make the most of the time he has left, and he thinks maybe Claude would be proud of him for having a plan.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dimitri figures out what to do next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The month of September has been really rough for me, so I decided to take a break from writing for a while, but I'm back now! I have this whole story outlined (for once in my life), so while it might take me a long time to actually write it, I do intend to finish this out. Sorry for the wait, and thanks for reading!

Telling Claude is the hardest part of Dimitri’s new plan, as always. He’s spent the last year in Almyra with Claude, keeping him company as he worked towards proving himself worthy of taking the throne, and it feels weird to think that he won’t be there to see Claude finally reach his goal. But Dimitri can’t distract Claude from that mission, especially if he’s going to get sicker each day. 

The only real concern Dimitri has is that he didn’t get to say a proper goodbye to his students. Dimitri had never expected that he would end up teaching at a school, let alone a  _ school in Almyra _ , but Claude had insisted that the experience would be good both for him and for the students, and he’d been correct. Every day, Dimitri had learned something new from his students as he’d taught them about Fodlan’s culture and history. He’d also helped oversee their combat lessons, as his Crest made him resilient to being repeatedly beaten up by young kids wielding wooden weapons. By the end of his first year of teaching, he had formed meaningful bonds with his students and unintentionally started the first transnational exchange program for teachers and students in Almyra and Fodlan.

Dimitri still isn’t sure if that had been Claude’s plan the whole time. It’s always hard to get a read on Claude.

So as usual, Dimitri can’t tell what Claude is thinking as he approaches him this morning. Claude is sitting on the edge of the dock, looking out at the lake next to the greenhouse as he sips a cup of steaming hot tea. From the scent-- Dimitri’s sense of smell has improved since the war’s end-- Dimitri thinks it’s Almyran Pine Needles, Claude’s favorite. The sun is just starting to rise, so not many people are wandering around the monastery yet, although Dimitri passed Seteth patrolling the grounds on his way from his guest room to the lake.

Dimitri sits down next to Claude, biting back his urge to speak. From their time together, he knows how much Claude enjoys the silence and serenity of the sunrise, so Dimitri lets Claude break the silence first.

“You turned in early last night. Is everything okay?”

Leave it to Claude to be observant. “Everything is fine. I simply was tired after a day of travel and a day of festivities,” Dimitri lies, suddenly thankful that Claude’s eyes are on the stillness of the lake and not on him.

Claude takes another sip of his tea, ponders Dimitri’s response. “Well, we have another long day of travel ahead of us soon enough.” Claude pauses, then turns to Dimitri, a knowing smile on his face. “Although if you had to ask me, it seems like you might be happier staying here instead.”

“I--” Dimitri is once again speechless at Claude’s impeccable instincts. “Yes, truthfully, listening to everyone talk last night about the work they have been doing made me wish that I could help repair Fodlan alongside them. I have taken the time to recover as everyone suggested, and I feel much more prepared to help now.” This isn’t a lie, really, unless you count lying by omission; Dimitri really  _ did _ feel better and really  _ did _ want to help his homeland heal, but his reasons for not returning to Almyra were more related to the flower petal he’d coughed up the day before. Dimitri fears that Claude might notice the missing piece of information.

A cough bubbles up in his chest, and he has to take a deep breath to avoid letting it out.

“I don’t want to leave you alone in Almyra, but I…” Dimitri holds back another cough, and tries to disguise it with a resolute look out towards the lake. “I am ready to make up for the crimes I committed during the war, and I must do that work here in Fodlan.”

Claude patted Dimitri on the shoulder. “I’m glad to hear it, friend. I hope you find what you have been looking for here. And hey, it’s enough for me to know that there’s one other person out there who knows my little royal secret.” Claude winks, and Dimitri can’t hold back his cough this time. He covers his mouth and tries to play it off as him choking on air. “Hey, now, I’m not  _ that _ bad-looking, am I?”

“Not at all,” Dimitri wheezes, and his heart clenches as he thinks about the days ahead where he won’t be able to look at Claude’s gorgeous green eyes, his mischievous smile, his currently clean-shaven but usually more rugged face. Goddess, Dimitri is going to miss Claude. There is nothing Dimitri wants more than to talk with Claude all morning, to drink in every last moment he has with Claude, but he can feel the itch in his throat getting worse. He has to end this conversation before Claude catches on to his budding illness.

Dimitri stands up. “I am going to go spar with Ingrid,” he manages to get out, his voice tight.

“Have fun,” Claude says, and maybe Dimitri is just lucky that Claude is distracted enough by the sunrise not to notice the way Dimitri practically runs away from the docks so that Claude will not hear him cough again, and again, and again.

Another yellow flower petal falls into Dimitri’s hand, and Dimitri gently tucks it into his pocket. He can’t bear to throw it away.

~*~

Everyone eats breakfast together, because if there’s one thing the Golden Deer know how to do, it’s sharing a meal. After sparring with Ingrid, Dimitri spends ten minutes in his room beforehand drinking water and waiting to see if he’s going to cough up more flower petals-- the last thing he wants to do is cough up flower petals over breakfast-- but aside from a sore throat, he seems to be fine.

The school year hasn’t quite started yet, luckily, so there aren’t any students wandering around; it’s just staff and alumni, which is probably better for the staff, because the Golden Deer are a handful on their own. Dimitri walks into the dining hall just in time to see Caspar (accidentally) knock a sleepy Linhardt face down into a bowl of porridge as he and Ferdinand passionately debate something. Across the room, Annette slips and falls while carrying her tray, and it’s only through Felix’s quick reflexes and Ingrid’s quick thinking that she doesn’t instantly drop her food onto the floor. Ignatz sits at the edge of the table, absentmindedly sketching the whole scene as Hilda and Raphael chat next to him. Claude isn’t here yet, surprisingly.

“I forgot how noisy we all are together,” Leonie says, admiring the chaos as she waits for her food. Dimitri nods. 

“I have missed this,” he says, watching fondly as Felix tries to wave off Annette’s profuse thanks.

Leonie grins as she grabs her tray of food. “It’s amazing what one year of no war can do for the spirits.”

“It certainly hasn’t altered Claude’s miserable sleep schedule any,” Dimitri mutters, and Leonie laughs.

“That’s Claude for you, always giving up sleep to come up with the next scheme.” Leonie pauses, studying Dimitri’s face intently. “You look a little down. Did something happen between you and Claude?”

“N-no,” Dimitri says quickly. “No, nothing happened. I just…” Dimitri sighs. “I have decided to stay in Fodlan. I want to be of use to my homeland and my people.”

“Torn between what you want to do and what you have to do, huh?” Leonie nods sympathetically. “I understand. I’d love to stay in Gloucester and actually settle down, but I can’t. I just  _ have _ to help all the smaller villages that haven’t been getting enough attention, or nobody will. I don’t see Lorenz more than once a moon, and it’s tough, but it’s what’s necessary right now for the Alliance.”

“I see.” Dimitri grabs his tray of food and follows Leonie over to the table. Predictably, she sits next to Lorenz, so he sits across from her and next to Marianne.

“You could come with me, you know. You’re less likely to be recognized in the Alliance, and you’d be helping people in a real, tangible way,” Leonie offers.

Dimitri wants to go straight to Faerghus, or to Duscur, but there’s truth in Leonie’s words. Dimitri’s hair has grown out since he was last seen in public, and he has the beginnings of a beard, but he still might be recognizable in Faerghus, and he isn’t sure that he’s ready to shoulder the burden of his sins so fully. Helping the Alliance would be a good starting point and would give him time to prepare for taking up his people’s expectations for him.

“Oh, are you not returning to Almyra, Dimitri?” Marianne asks, concern flitting briefly across her face.

“No. I— I want to help rebuild Fodlan,” Dimitri says with conviction. “I believe that I am finally ready to help.”

“You do look a lot better,” Hilda remarks, reaching across Marianne to pat Dimitri on the arm. “I think you might have gotten a tan, too! Did Claude have you working outdoors all day?”

“It was by choice,” Dimitri assures her, only realizing afterwards that she was probably just teasing. “Although Almyra certainly is much hotter than Fhirdiad.”

“You have to tell me all about it,” Ignatz says, eyes sparkling as he looks up from his sketch. “I want to visit, but Claude insists that I wait until relations have improved a little more.”

“Well, I hear from Claude that the next king is to be crowned some time in the next year, so perhaps we can all visit for that as a gesture of goodwill from Fodlan,” Hilda says with a smirk, and Dimitri has to be careful not to choke on his porridge. Only Dimitri and Hilda know that Claude is in line to become the king of Almyra, and they’re both sworn to secrecy. Claude has been trying to stop any of their friends from visiting Almyra until his coronation in the near future, where he intends to surprise them all, and, well, Hilda was helping in her own way.

“Ah, that sounds divine! I wonder what a coronation is like. I’ll have to bring my best paints,” Ignatz says excitedly.

“I wonder if they have good food,” Raphael adds as he takes a giant bite of a chicken leg— and who even eats chicken for breakfast? Ingrid chooses that moment to slide onto the bench next to Dimitri, and he notes with dismay that she is  _ also  _ eating fried chicken for breakfast. Felix sits next to her, and Annette and Mercedes sit across from them.

“Has anyone seen Sylvain?” Felix asks grumpily, and a sly grin slips onto Hilda’s face.

“When was the last time you saw him, Felix? Last night in be—” 

Hilda doesn’t finish her sentence; Felix hurls a fork in her direction, and she cackles as she ducks out of the way.

As chaos unfolds around Dimitri once again, his mind wanders back to Leonie’s offer. Helping out villages in the Alliance… He could see himself doing that, at least for a little while.

And it would make Claude happy, right?


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dimitri spends some time in Alliance territory helping make Fodlan into the place Claude dreamed it could be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew, it’s been a while! I’ve been writing original content this month, so fic fell on the backburner for a bit. But here we go! Thanks for reading!

“Uh, um, how can I help you?” A timid woman answers the door, and Dimitri is caught off guard by how frightened she looks.

Dimitri glances down at the script in his hands. “Good afternoon, miss. I’m here on behalf of the Alliance roundtable to ask for your opinion on what would improve your life the most right now. If you could answer a quick survey for me…”

A few houses down, and a plethora of survey answers later, Dimitri pauses to take a break. He sits on the side of the road and takes a big gulp of water from his waterskin. Talking so much while his throat is sore has not done wonders for his cough, but the flower petals don’t come too often unless he thinks about--

Nope. Nope. Dimitri mentally slaps himself and shakes his head to refocus. He can’t afford to slack off on the job; he and Ignatz are supposed to finish this whole town and ride to the neighboring town before sundown.

“Are you doing all right, Dimitri?” Ignatz approaches him with a concerned look on his face.

Dimitri nods and jumps to his feet. “I was simply taking a break. I can keep going.”

“This work is really important, so don’t push yourself too hard, okay? We have a long way to go until we’re done for the day,” Ignatz says, determined as always. He’s changed so much from their Academy days, when he was so timid and unsure. Of course, Dimitri has changed, too.

Back then, Dimitri hadn’t noticed Claude.

Dimitri coughs into his hand and forces himself to change his line of thinking.

“The idea of surveying the population is quite simple in principle. It’s a wonder that we have never tried it before,” Dimitri says, his mind wandering back to days spent learning how to rule in Fhirdiad. His father had always taught him to rely on the ruling lord of an area to know what the people needed best, but the war had shown firsthand that lords often are mistaken about their territory’s needs. Leonie had been the one to propose surveying the population, and she hadn’t been afraid to provide the manpower to back her plan.

Ignatz chuckles. “Seems all those arguments during the war led to some good ideas for how to move forward. Leonie and Lorenz are a frighteningly good team.”

Dimitri thinks about how Claude’s calm, rational thought balances out his emotional reactions. How Claude’s overthinking pairs well with Dimitri’s singlemindedness. How Claude’s far-reaching dreams support Dimitri’s near-sighted goals.

Dimitri coughs up another cluster of petals and quickly hides them in his fist while Ignatz is staring off in the distance. 

~*~

Dimitri’s head has just hit his pillow when Leonie’s voice floats over from the bed next to him. “Hey, Dimitri?”

“Yes, Leonie? Is something wrong?” Dimitri immediately jumps to wondering if he was being a considerate enough roommate, if he was giving her enough privacy, if he was upsetting her in any way. At every village they stopped at, Ignatz and Raphael shared a room, leaving Dimitri to share with Leonie to save money. Dimitri doesn’t mind sharing a room— it has been a while since he’s had a room to himself, and the company keeps his nightmares at bay— but he cannot help but be a little nervous about sharing with a married woman. Dimitri wouldn’t do anything indecent on purpose, but he can always do something indecent on accident, so it never hurts to check in.

“No, I’m just wondering… have you figured out what you want?” Leonie asks.

“Huh?”

“You know, what do you want to do with your life? What goal are you chasing down next?” Leonie sits up a little and turns to look at him, and in the dim candlelight, Dimitri can clearly see her inquisitive orange eyes.

“I want to make up for the atrocities I committed during the war—”

“No, no, no, that’s what you think you  _ have _ to do. At best, that’s what you need, and at worst, it’s what you are burdened with. But what do you  _ want _ ?”

Dimitri shifts uncomfortably under his covers. He knows what he wants, is more aware of it now than ever before thanks to the persistent itchiness in his throat and tightness in his chest. He wants to let go and be himself, without any obligations to a higher calling. He wants to help people without handling all the politics of who he can and can’t save. He wants to bring smiles to people’s faces and relieve them of their pain. 

But even more than that, he wants to be loved. He wants someone to hold him in their arms and tell him that they value him not for his Crest or his political position or his physical strength or his abilities, but for who he  _ is _ .

Dimitri thinks that maybe he was loved like this once, long ago, as he curled up in his bed next to Felix and Ingrid and Sylvain, their small hearts beating in time with his own, not yet tainted by responsibilities and honor and revenge.

He wants that innocent, pure love back. He wants to believe that someone out there could love him like that again. He wants to believe that he could love  _ himself _ in that way.

His heart wants that love from one person in particular, the way Dimitri loves him. But it’s hopeless to think he would ever deserve it.

“What if my desires are unattainable?” Dimitri asks, voice trembling slightly.

Leonie snorts derisively. “Come on. You’re Dimitri Alexander Blaiddyd. Just because you aren’t king of Faerghus now doesn’t mean you weren’t raised to be. You’ve led armies, handled difficult emotional trauma, and seen things nobody should ever have to, and you’re telling me that you aren’t capable of getting whatever it is you want?”

“I—”

“Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying you’re somehow invincible or perfect just because you were a prince. But as someone who’s watched you grow and seen what you can do even while you’re still hurting, I refuse to believe that there still exists something you can’t either get yourself or ask for help to get.” Leonie’s eyes practically glow with passion as she speaks, her voice raising in volume over time. Dimitri flinches, and draws the covers over him protectively.

“I don’t know who could help me with this one,” he admits meekly.

“Then try harder to find someone. Don’t just give up at the starting line,” Leonie huffs. “I’ll stop pushing for now, but I want you to keep thinking about it. You’ll burn out if you’re only doing this type of work to help others and not yourself.”

“I… I will,” Dimitri lies, and then slips out of bed as he feels a cough coming on. “I— I need a glass of water,” he says quickly as he dashes out of the room. As soon as he’s in the hallway, he coughs and coughs and coughs until finally, a single flower dislodges itself from his throat and lands in his outstretched hand. The flower is bulb-shaped, with small, thin petals blooming out from the center. Dimitri doesn’t know a lot about flowers, but it doesn’t take a genius to know why the petals are yellow. Against his better judgment, Dimitri keeps the flower, tucking it under his pillow when he returns to his room. When he sleeps, he dreams of Claude.

~*~

As Dimitri visits more Alliance towns and speaks with more people, he is reminded of a conversation he had with Claude just a few days after they arrived in Almyra. Claude has been reading a stack of reports with a frown on his face, and Dimitri had been sitting on a nearby armchair and journaling as Professor Manuela had taught him to do.

_ “Is something wrong?” Dimitri had asked, expecting that perhaps the reports mentioned some troubling circumstances. _

_ But Claude just shook his head and pushed his chair away from his desk. “It’s just frustrating seeing all these assumptions about what our people want and what our people need. All of our problems could be solved with a little bit of face-to-face communication, you know?” Claude scrubbed at his face with his hands. “I guess this will be my first order of business. A little undercover work in the town to see what people really think.” _

_ “What do you hope to learn?” Dimitri asked, intrigued by Claude’s line of thinking. He’d always been frustrated by how little he had known his own people as a prince. _

_ “What people’s day-to-day lives are like. How they’re faring. What ails them, and what are they celebrating right now?” Claude turned to Dimitri with a sly smile on his face. “Why spend all this time speculating when you can just ask?” _

As usual, Claude is right. Dimitri has learned more about the lives of commoners in the last couple of weeks than in the rest of his life combined. It is striking to him how wrong Edelgard had been in her assumptions about what people wanted in this moment, and how right Claude had been. His intuition was truly something to behold.

Dimitri’s coughing gets worse. The work he’s doing here is important, but it reminds him too much of Claude. He needs a change, only he doesn’t know where to go from here. Leonie’s question from a few nights ago rings in his ears: what does he want?

Not for the first time, Dimitri thinks that maybe he has never known what he wanted. If he hadn’t gotten sick, he might not even know that he was in love with Claude.

~*~

In one of the small towns they pass through, Dimitri sees a group of kids running, carefree, through the streets playing tag. The kid who’s ‘it’ trips and falls and begins to cry, and another child runs over to help him up and comfort him. The crying kid begins to sob into the shirt of the other, engulfing the other kid in a full hug, and for a moment, it’s not two random children standing there, playing: it’s Felix sobbing into Dimitri’s coat jacket after falling down in the snow and hitting his head on some ice, while Sylvain runs off to fetch Glenn and Ingrid tries to comfort Felix over Dimitri’s shoulder.

Dimitri turns away, his throat suddenly tight, and keeps walking.

~*~

They take a break in Goneril territory, because it would be incredibly rude and also pretty much impossible to pass through without visiting Hilda and Marianne. Hilda hosts all of them at her family’s home, and Dimitri belatedly realizes that this is his first experience with Alliance nobility. The Goneril home is nice, certainly, but Dimitri is struck by how it is less ornate and even smaller than many of the Faerghan noble residences he has visited.

“It’s because my ancestors didn’t care to make a statement with wealth. To them, strength was more important, which makes sense since we’re in charge of protecting Fodlan’s Throat. Still, it’s funny how we’re no different than the Almyrans just across the way, huh?” Hilda says when Dimitri asks about it over tea. Yet another thing that Claude had been correct about. “Anyway, I hear you’re looking for a change of pace.”

Dimitri blinks. He has no idea where Hilda heard that from because he hadn’t ever said it aloud, he’s pretty sure. “Yes, I am. I was thinking about going back to Faerghus.”

“Hmm, and what will you do there? The Kingdom is a lot messier than the Alliance right now, you know,” Hilda says, stirring a heapful of sugar into her tea. “Mercedes and Annette are helping villages rebuild and recover, if you wanted to do something like what Leonie has you doing here.”

Dimitri’s throat itches and he can almost taste the flower petals. He shakes his head.

Hilda gives him a good, long look. “You know what  _ I _ think you need? Some quality time with Felix and Sylvain. You never really did make up with Felix, did you?”

Dimitri shifts uncomfortably in his seat under Hilda’s scrutinous gaze, wondering how she is able to read him so well. He  _ has _ been thinking about his childhood friends recently. Would they be sad when he died?

“Felix is just a big baby underneath all those thorns. He and Sylvain have been working hard to get rid of the remnants of Those Who Slither. Felix didn’t say  _ why _ he chose to take up that mission, but I think it’s because he wants to shut down the western lords who were so critical of your father and you,” Hilda continues, smirking. “So you should thank him! That’s my opinion.”

Dimitri swallows the guilt in his throat. He should apologize to Felix and give his friends the time with him that they deserved before he died. It was the right thing to do, if he was going to die so selfishly.

“All right,” Dimitri says. “Do you know where I might find them?”

Hilda groans dramatically. “They do such a  _ terrible  _ job of communicating with the rest of us. Would it kill them to write a letter every once in a while? But you’re in luck. Annette caught them in Fhirdiad a week ago, and they were heading to Gaspard territory. You should be able to catch them there.”

“Thank you,” Dimitri says earnestly.

“You owe me,” Hilda replies with a wink, and Dimitri realizes that he’s accrued yet another debt he will be unable to pay off before he dies. Hopefully, Hilda will forgive him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yellow hyacinths can signify jealousy and envy.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dimitri says his goodbyes to each of his friends, and continues to get the therapy he didn't ask for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think it's hilarious that I first wrote a Golden Deer route fic with almost no Golden Deer presence, and now I'm writing a Dimiclaude hanahaki fic where Claude is booted out of the picture pretty early on. I swear I'm not trying to live off of false advertising here; these things just... keep happening...
> 
> Anyway, this is the halfway point story-wise! Thanks for reading!

Hilda lends Dimitri a horse because, well, he didn’t exactly have one. Now owing Hilda two favors, Dimitri rides across the entirety of Fodlan in a little under a week, not taking nearly as many breaks as he should have. He makes one pit stop at Garreg Mach, but Ingrid is out on a mission as one of the newly rebranded Knights of Fodlan, and it could be anywhere from days to weeks before she returns. So Dimitri rides on towards Castle Gaspard, leaving a trail of yellow flower petals and blood in his wake. Three weeks have passed since he’d first gotten the disease that is going to kill him.

~*~

Dimitri does not find Felix and Sylvain so much as he runs into them while they are in the middle of a battle with some bandits. He hears the battle before he sees it, and as he approaches the clash, he spots Sylvain’s red hair among the fray. He doesn’t see Felix, but he hears the sounds of quick sword work and the occasional annoyed grunt. Dimitri doesn’t want to surprise either of his friends into getting injured, so he jumps off his horse, ties the reigns to a thin tree branch nearby, and prepares to jump into the battle at the periphery.

Dimitri is out of practice, but not so much that he can’t be useful. He draws his lance and immediately recoils at the sharp pain in his chest when he extends his arm fully. Well, this isn’t Dimitri’s first time fighting through pain, so he runs forward and strikes at the nearest bandit, even as his chest aches with each painful breath. There are six bandits still standing, and Dimitri’s attack draws two of them towards him. One is wielding a sword, and the other is wielding a spiked mace. Dimitri ducks out of the way of the mace and very ungracefully thrusts his lance at the person’s side, wounding the person but hopefully in a non-lethal way. 

The bandit with the sword swings at him and grazes his upper arm, drawing blood, and Dimitri realizes that he isn’t wearing armor.

“You’re a fool,” Felix growls, knocking the bandit out with the blunt edge of his sword before Dimitri gets seriously wounded. “Why would you rush into a fight that we clearly had handled if you weren’t equipped for it?”

“I, ah, didn’t think about it,” Dimitri admits sheepishly, sheathing his lance. Sylvain walks over with a wink and a wave and places his hands just above the bleeding wound. His hands glow white and the wound knits itself closed. “Thank you, Sylvain.”

“No biggie. So, what brings you out here? I thought you were helping Leonie and them out in the Alliance,” Sylvain says, raising an eyebrow.

Dimitri nods. “I was, but I realized that I really wanted to be back in the Kingdom working to restore it. Hilda suggested I seek you both out and work alongside you.”

Felix makes a disapproving noise. “How do you expect to be able to help anyone if you can’t even help yourself?”

Dimitri doesn’t have an answer. Felix is right. He’d just be a burden on his friends, he should just leave--

“Now, now, Felix,” Sylvain says, putting a hand on his shoulder. “We’d be happy to have you come along, Dimitri. But maybe let’s get you some armor first, yeah?”

“And some rest. You look like shit,” Felix gripes, but his words sound less venomous.

“You  _ do _ look a little pale. I thought you were supposed to get more tan in Almyra, not  _ less _ ,” Sylvain jokes, and Dimitri coughs involuntarily. Sylvain picks up on it, of course. “Are you sick? Maybe you shouldn’t be fighting right now.”

“It’s just a cold, since the seasons are changing,” Dimitri lies, and he swallows the flower petals that are rising in his throat. “I am still fine to ride and fight.” As if to prove his point, Dimitri walks over to the tree where his horse is tethered and begins to untie the reigns. He can feel Felix’s watchful eyes on him as he readies himself to ride. Finally, Felix frowns and turns away to mount Sylvain’s horse. Dimitri sighs in relief and ducks behind the tree, finally unable to hold his coughing back any longer. His whole body aches dully as he coughs without any sign of stopping, until finally a large yellow flower with petals fanning out from the center falls out of his mouth and onto the ground. The petals are stained with blood.

A yellow carnation, Dimitri notes. It’s the first flower that he’s recognized. He wants to keep it, just as he’s kept the others, but with Felix and Sylvain watching him, he worries that they will find the flowers and figure out that he is dying. He dumps all of the flowers that he’s kept so far onto the ground and kicks some dirt over them. 

Then, he clears his throat, mounts his horse, and rejoins Felix and Sylvain.

~*~

With the decline of the western lords during the war, bandits have swarmed the west, establishing their own informal ruling structure based on fear. Felix and Sylvain have been waging war on these bandits for the better part of the year, weakening their hold on the villages that were unwillingly paying bribes to keep the bandits from destroying them. With the villages essentially being held hostage, Rodrigue can’t send any real aid without endangering the very people he wants to help. That’s where Felix and Sylvain come in; as a two-person squad, they can operate undetected and unsuspected.

“Our real goal is to find that snake Cornelia,” Felix says angrily when Dimitri asks for details at breakfast, and it takes a moment for Dimitri to realize that he is angry at Cornelia and not him.

“She disappeared pretty fast after we killed Nemesis. She could be dead, for all we know, but it’s always good to make sure,” Sylvain adds, waving around his spoon for emphasis. “Maybe having you here will help draw her out, although I wouldn’t count on it. You look pretty different than you used to.”

“That was intentional. Claude advised that I grew out my hair since I have only ever been seen in public with my hair cut short,” Dimitri says, and he expects the subsequent itching of his throat and aching of his lungs. 

Felix snorts. “At least one of you has a brain.”

_ Yes _ , Dimitri agrees silently.  _ Claude is the mastermind, and I carry out his plans. It is-- was-- a wonderful arrangement… _ “Excuse me. I need to get more water.”

As Felix and Sylvain begin to plan out their attack on a bandit stronghold nearby, Dimitri grabs his drinking glass and walks as calmly as he can despite the mounting discomfort in his throat. He sets his glass down at the bar, and the bartender begins to fill it with water. Dimitri glances over at their table to make sure that Sylvain and Felix are not looking and then coughs hard and fast into his hand, dislodging the flower swiftly. It’s another yellow flower, and not one that Dimitri recognizes. The flower has small, tear-shaped petals branching from the pollen at the center. Dimitri crushes it with his fist and throws it in the waste bin before returning to the table.

~*~

Days pass, and they jump from town to town, clearing out bandits as they go. Each battle is taxing on Dimitri’s sick and aching body, and he spends his nights struggling to breathe and overwhelmed by headaches, throat pain, and chest pain. Dimitri does not think he can handle this for an extended period of time, but he doesn’t want to leave without first making sure that he and Felix were on good terms.

After one particularly long siege on a bandit base, the trio arrives back in town alongside the villagers who had elected to fight alongside them, and Dimitri is ready to collapse into bed and sleep forever, but he knows that their work isn’t done yet. He, Felix, and Sylvain clean up and dress their wounds with the practice of people who have fought far too many battles, and then they head back out to the center of the village to distract the kids while their parents get first aid care. Sylvain immediately runs into the mass of children, charismatic as usual, but Felix and Dimitri hang back.

“You’re hesitating.” Felix, as usual, reads Dimitri like a book. “Why are you holding back?”

“Hmm?” Dimitri looks up from where he’s busily twiddling his thumbs and trying to avoid looking at Felix at all costs.

“We’re trying to  _ help _ these people and you won’t even talk to them,” Felix says slowly, emphatically, as if Dimitri is as dense as a brick wall-- which, to be fair, he might be. He sweeps his hand out towards the group of village children who are currently climbing all over Sylvain like he’s a jungle gym. “You  _ like _ kids.”

Dimitri flinches. “Yes, I do, but I, ah--”

“You’re stupid.” Felix grabs Dimitri by the arm and drags him over to where the kids are playing; Dimitri doesn’t resist, because when has he ever resisted Felix? “Hey. Kids. This is Dimitri. He’s even more fun to climb than Sylvain.”

A young boy with shaggy blond hair not dissimilar to Dimitri’s own turns towards him, blue eyes wide, and whispers, “Is that  _ the _ Dimitri? Dimitri von Blay-- Blade-- Blaiddyd?”

“Yeah, that’s him!” Sylvain confirms, and Dimitri prepares himself for the children’s disappointment that he gave up being king.

“Mommy said you’re not a prince anymore. Why aren’t you a prince?” a young girl with brown pigtails and dirt smeared all over her pale skin asks.

“Dimitri gave up being a prince so he could help more people in other ways,” Sylvain explains, grinning up at Dimitri as the kids gasped in excitement.

“Yay! I wanna play with a former prince!”

“In school, they say that you made a sac-ri-fice for the greater good. What’s a sac-ri-fice?”

“You’re super tall! I wanna be tall one day!”

Dimitri gives Felix a helplessly confused look as the kids all begin to chatter excitedly at once. “Why don’t they…?”

“What, hate you? Because they don’t care if you used to be a prince. Nobody does. The only person stopping you from getting a clean start is yourself,” Felix says, crossing his arms.

Two things strike Dimitri in that moment: first, that in the year he had been gone, Felix had become even wiser somehow, and second, that Claude had said  _ the exact same thing _ to him just months ago, as he’d struggled to settle into his role as a teacher in a public school in the capital.

“The only person stopping me is myself,” Dimitri murmurs, and Felix gives him a blank stare.

“Yes, that’s what I just said,” Felix says as if Dimitri is the dumbest person in the world, and he really might be.

Dimitri falls into an awkward silence as the children begin to climb all over him, and he gives them his attention. He isn’t even aware of the fact that he’s smiling until the kids are finally herded away by Sylvain to get them back to their homes and families.

“Felix,” Dimitri says, not really sure what to say or how to start, “are we… have I… do you still hate me?”

“I never hated  _ you _ ,” Felix snaps, and then his expression softens. “I hated how you hid who you were from the rest of the world, and how you pretended to be something that you couldn’t be, and how you didn’t trust the rest of us enough to tell us that something was wrong.”

“If I were to die tomorrow, would you have any regrets about where we stand with each other right now?”

Felix turns to him and puts his hand on his sword instinctively. “You had better not be planning something stupid.”

Dimitri is shocked to see fear in Felix’s eyes.

“I swear to you, I do not intend to die tomorrow. All I meant was-- are we… okay? Have I… earned your forgiveness?”

“Yes.” Felix says the word immediately, without hesitation. Dimitri feels his throat tightening, and for the first time in a long time, it’s not the Hanahaki; it’s just good old-fashioned tears. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Dimitri. You’re still a fool. You always put others before yourself, and you don’t think twice about your own well-being. If you would stop standing in your own way, you could get what you want. You frustrate me, but I don’t hate you.”

“Thank you,” Dimitri says, his voice trembling, and he holds back his tears for fear of coughing as he cries.

Felix turns away, his cheeks suddenly very red. “We should go back. To the inn,” he mumbles, and begins walking without waiting to hear Dimitri’s response.

As Dimitri follows behind Felix, he replays Felix’s words in his head.  _ If you would stop standing in your own way, you could get what you want _ .

Dimitri imagines being held by Claude, being told that he’s doing enough, waking up with Claude at his side. And for once, he thinks that maybe, although it isn’t his fault, Felix is wrong. What he wants is permanently out of reach.

~*~

Two weeks pass. Dimitri tries to put his armor on and his chest constricts so tightly from the armor’s weight that he stumbles backwards and falls onto the floor, panting and red-faced. His fingers fumble with the straps and he throws the armor off as his breaths turn to coughs once more, and it is by the sheer grace of the Goddess Sothis that Felix and Sylvain do not hear him as he chokes up yet another flower. 

Dimitri leans back against the wall and focuses on taking in deep breaths as best as he can. With each breath, the vines in his lungs dig deeper, determined to maintain their hold. He takes small sips of water from his waterskin with difficulty. He can’t swallow easily anymore; he’s had to eat his food in smaller bites and though he’s been trying, he thinks he’s probably eating less overall. 

He can’t fight like this. Felix will notice how much pain he is in, and Sylvain will notice that he is majorly ill.

Where does this leave him? He has already said his goodbyes to the original Golden Deer aside from Lorenz and Lysithea, but he was never particularly close to either of them. He would like to see Bernadetta or Caspar, but entering Empire territory is risky. He has too many enemies there, and he won’t have the strength to fight them off. He could go to Fhirdiad to see Mercedes and Annette and Rodrigue, but this seems dangerous for the same reason that going to the Empire is not an option. He does not want his presence to intervene in Rodrigue’s ongoing work to rebuild trust between Faerghus and its government.

So he could go to Duscur to see Dedue, or back to Garreg Mach to see Ingrid. It makes the most sense to travel north now and come back down south before winter strikes, Dimitri decides. If he aims to travel back to Garreg Mach by the end of the month, he should escape the first winter storms.

Dimitri begins to pack his things. Felix will not be happy about the sudden decision, but Dimitri knows that Felix and Sylvain will be fine without him. He has seen the way they look at each other; it’s the same way he looks at Claude. And while he longs for Claude to look at him in the same way, he is more happy than jealous of his two friends. He is glad that they have found solace in each other’s love. And when he dies, they will support each other. They will be okay.

~*~

The journey north to Duscur is long. Dimitri sends a letter to Dedue letting him know of his plans to visit; he’s sure that a messenger with a letter will reach Duscur before he will, what with his health slowing him down. The number of hours he can comfortably ride on his horse drops day by day. He continues to ride nonetheless.

During the year he spent in Almyra, Dedue had written him a steady stream of letters informing him of his progress in reviving Duscur, so Dimitri is well aware of the situation. Rodrigue had granted formal independence to Duscur, and Viscount Kleiman had been deposed and replaced for his involvement in the Tragedy (although it seemed that the era of lords and kings was coming to an end, so the replacement was temporary at best). Duscurian survivors had slowly but surely flocked back to their homeland, and there were many thriving villages in the territory now.

Still, Dimitri cannot help but be on edge. Dedue always used to say that land has memory, and Dimitri definitely feels it now. As he enters what used to be Kleiman territory, he shivers inexplicably, and a sudden chill lingers in the air. Everywhere he looks, he sees flames licking at his legs. He is warm with a slight fever due to illness, yet it feels like his skin is burning, crumbling away. The voices of his ghosts float in the brisk autumn wind, beckoning him to his death.

How fitting would it be if he died here, a decade later?

Dimitri wishes he was not alone.

No, that isn’t accurate. He wishes Claude was here.

His nightmares had never gone away completely, but in Almyra, they had been better. After Claude had become aware of Dimitri’s nightmare problem, he had moved his desk into Dimitri’s guest room and worked there late into the night. Whenever Dimitri had a nightmare, he would sit on the edge of the bed and stroke Dimitri’s hair until he woke up and reassure him that everything was all right. Dimitri hadn’t expected it the first time, but he’d welcomed it, melting into Claude’s gentle touch embarrassingly quickly.

He so badly wants Claude here to reassure him now, as his nightmares spiral out of control.

He cannot sleep without seeing fire everywhere, scorching the earth, extinguishing life. He hears the screams clearly even during the day, but at night, they are louder, more desperate. They did not want to die. They did not  _ deserve  _ to die. Their transparent hands grab at his legs, claw at his chest, close around his throat. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, he’s being suffocated by smoke, he’s coughing up blood, it’s finally his turn to die--

He wakes up from every nightmare drenched in sweat and covered in sticky flower petals, almost orange with the amount of blood soaked into them. Once the initial fear and panic subside, he opens his journal, as Manuela taught him, and writes down what he saw. Then, he flips to the front of the book, where he has carefully taped in the letters his friends have sent him over the last year, and he reads them until he has the strength to stand up and continue his journey.

If he wants Claude’s love, he will have to earn it. So no matter how paralyzing the nightmares or how distracting the daydreams, Dimitri powers through. And finally, he reaches Duscur.

~*~

Dimitri does grunt work, mostly, so he doesn’t see Dedue often during the days. Most of the villages have rebuilt and are self-sustaining, but they are still working on building infrastructure between villages, so Dimitri helps pave the roads and take messages and supplies between towns. With his Crest-backed strength, he is able to do the work of two men, even while ill. It’s also harvest season, so Dimitri helps harvest potatoes and squashes, too. In fact, he does whatever he is told to do without question. It doesn’t matter to him if his body is slowly failing, because this is what he has wanted to do for a long, long time.

The blame for the destruction of Duscur lies squarely on his shoulders. He failed to convince his people that Duscur was innocent, and innocent people paid the price for it. As a member of the ruling class, he should have wielded his power better. He should have recovered sooner. He should have done many things, and instead, he did nothing.

Not all of the Duscurians are kind to him. Dimitri doesn’t ask them to be. He knows his complicity in the system that subjugated and wiped out their livelihoods, and he is here to atone. The looks he receives as he goes about his business range from frustrated to pitying. He understands, and he hopes that the people who are giving him odd jobs to do gain some satisfaction from commanding him around.

He knows that he, at least, feels better now that he is at their mercy.

It is clear that Dedue has worked hard to help his people heal because Dimitri does not experience quite the amount of vitriol and judgment that he expects. There is one person who confronts him, a middle-aged man with scars all across his face. He roughly pushes Dimitri to the side as he is shopping in the market on behalf of an elderly couple.

“You. You’re the princeling of Faerghus,” the man says roughly.

“That is me,” Dimitri says evenly, looking the man in the eye. “If there are things you wish to say to me, I am ready to hear them. But I have relinquished my power in Fhirdiad, so bear that in mind.”

“Hmph. Doesn’t make you any less involved,” the man says, and Dimitri wants to agree, but he doesn’t say so out loud. He has spoken, and now it is time to listen, to let this man say what he has been wanting to say for years and years and years. “Why are you here? To make yourself feel good? To absolve yourself of any blame about what your country did to us? Helping us out here and there won’t make up for the genocide of our people.”

“No,” Dimitri says quietly. “It will not.”

“Then? What are you here for?” the man prods.

“I am here to see my dear friend Dedue, and to help in any way that I can. I cannot make up for the actions of my people, but it is my responsibility to try,” Dimitri says.

The man narrows his eyes, examining Dimitri intently, then sighs and shakes his head. “I’ll never forgive the people of Fodlan,” the man says firmly. “I’ll never forgive any of the bastards who killed my family. And I may not forgive you, either. But…” The man diverts his gaze. “Dedue is right. It’s hard to be pissed off at you for it.”

Dimitri doesn’t know what to say to that, so he simply thanks the man and continues on his way.

Ashe arrives in Duscur three days after Dimitri with an armful of flower seeds to replant and a very eager smile. As the appointed ambassador between Duscur and the Knights of Fodlan, his presence is hardly unexpected. 

“Oh, Dimitri! I didn’t know you’d be here! How are Sylvain and Felix?” he says, smile widening as he catches sight of Dimitri during his morning walk. 

(Dimitri is not foolish enough to wave his weapon around when he already has made a poor impression on the people around him. Instead, he has resorted to walks to keep him on his toes. He would run, but his lungs grow weaker by the day.)

“They are fine,” Dimitri says, raising an eyebrow. “How did you know I was with them?”

“Hilda wrote,” Ashe says, then frowns. “Are you all right? You look a little under the weather.”

It probably doesn’t help that Dimitri is visibly shaking from the exertion of a short walk. “I am fine. I have a slight cold, but it is nothing serious. I plan to return to Garreg Mach in a week or two if I am still sick so that I can avoid the cold weather.”

“Good idea. Wouldn’t want the weather to make your cold worse,” Ashe says. “Have you told Dedue? He makes some excellent teas for when you’re feeling ill.”

“I have not,” Dimitri admits. “Thank you for the suggestion. I will ask him when he is not as busy.”

Ashe smiles, radiant as always. Guilt gathers in Dimitri’s throat as he imagines that smile fading in the face of his death. “I’ll go tell him right now, since I have to tell him I’m here anyway. Don’t push yourself too hard, okay?”

Dimitri nods as Ashe rides off towards the stables to care for his horse. The guilt doesn’t leave him.

~*~

It is a lot harder for Dimitri to hold back his coughing around Ashe and Dedue. Even for someone as dense and foolish as he is, it’s impossible to miss the love that binds them. Felix’s and Sylvain’s relationship progressed behind closed doors; Dimitri could avoid watching them without his heart aching in his chest and flower petals bubbling up behind his lips. 

But Ashe and Dedue are made of quiet moments and shared glances, of tender touches and subtle moments. Ashe puts a hand on Dedue’s arm as they dig up a flowerbed together. Dedue wraps his arms around Ashe’s waist while Ashe is chopping up carrots. Ashe gives Dedue a kiss on the cheek before they part ways for the day, and Dedue squeezes Ashe’s hand when he returns. Their love is hiding around every corner, and Dimitri wouldn’t mind if it didn’t remind him so much of what he wants, what he doesn’t have.

He wants to be held in Claude’s arms. He wants to hold Claude in his arms and squeeze him tight. He wants to bury his head in Claude’s shoulder and cry, and he wants Claude to stroke his hair and murmur quietly that it will be okay. He wants to wake up every morning to see Claude’s eyes, glowing, filled with a life and an energy that Dimitri can only dream of having. Oh, he wants, he wants, he  _ wants _ .

He coughs, he coughs, he  _ coughs _ .

At night, he starts coughing full flowers up regularly: hyacinths, zinnias, carnations, sunflowers. He shows the flowers to Dedue to get help identifying them, pretending that he found them nearby or that he brought them from Faerghus to ask about. He keeps a bucket by his bedside so he can vomit flower petals and blood into it throughout the night. Every morning, after a full night of restless sleep and nightmares, he takes the bucket out to the garden and buries the flower petals. Hopefully, they can at least serve as fertilizer for something else to grow.

~*~

The second to last night of Dimitri’s stay in Duscur, there is a community storytelling gathering around a bonfire at sunset. Dimitri fully intends to stay in his guest room and huddle under the covers of his bed because the weather has been getting colder and his fever has been getting worse. If he wasn’t well equipped with the cloak that Mercedes sewed for him, he would be constantly shivering from his fever. He thinks that if Dedue and Ashe weren’t so busy with the restoration of Duscur, they would have noticed his illness by now.

“Dimitri.” Dedue’s muted voice comes through the door, and Dimitri flinches.

“One moment,” he says, his voice hoarse, and he slowly sits up and walks over to the door to answer it.

Dimitri opens the door and finds himself face-to-face with Dedue and Ashe. “Are you coming to the gathering tonight?” Dedue asks.

“I was not sure that I would be welcome as an outsider,” Dimitri says, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot.

“You have helped rebuild Duscur with us, and you are a victim of the same trauma that we are. You are welcome,” Dedue says firmly.

Dimitri grimaces. While this would normally be nice to hear, he now has no excuse not to attend. “I… am glad to hear that, but I do not think everyone shares that sentiment.”

Dedue hesitates, then nods. “I will not push you. I do not want you to be uncomfortable. If you change your mind, you are always welcome to come, and I will be there with Ashe.”

“Thank you,” Dimitri says, willing the itch in his throat to go away.

Dedue leaves, and Dimitri thinks that he might be free to melt back into his bed, but Ashe turns to him with concern in his eyes, and Dimitri braces himself for round two.

“Dimitri, you know that this means a lot to Dedue, right? He wants to share his homeland, his culture, with us. This is his chance to be his whole self while we get to watch,” Ashe says, his eyes lighting up as he talks (and oh Goddess, Dimitri wishes Claude lit up like that when talking about him).

Dimitri swallows hard and tries not to choke. “I… I see. I will join you, then. Allow me to change into more suitable clothing.”

Ashe’s face brightens, and he nods. “Thank you, Dimitri. I’ll go on ahead and let Dedue know.”

As soon as Ashe is gone, Dimitri closes the door, leans against it, and slides down to the floor. He lets the coughs out, lets the blood and petals splatter onto the floor. He’ll clean it up in a moment. He is so tired.

He nearly falls asleep right there on the floor, but he finally gathers the strength to stand up, sweep the flower petals into the bucket, and change into a nicer set of clothes. He wears one of the embellished eye patches that Bernadetta made for him, and the cloak that Mercedes sewed.

If he’s going to die, he owes it to Dedue and Ashe to make their last memory of him something nice.

Dimitri walks over to the bonfire in the center of the town square just as the event is starting, or at least he thinks it’s the beginning. People are gathered in a circle around the fire, and Dimitri spots Dedue and Ashe near the front. He makes eye contact with Dedue and waves, and Dedue smiles wider than Dimitri has seen in a long time. He considers walking over to join the couple, then decides that it would be better not to attract attention. So he hangs in the back and watches as people enter the circle one by one and walk around the fire, telling legends passed down by mouth from generation to generation in heightened voices and with animated expressions. As one person talks, others sometimes step into the circle and dance, or hum, or play drums and shake rainsticks for effect. It is a comfortable, homey environment. It feels safe.

It occurs to Dimitri, as he looks on, that there is a difference between sharing a space with someone and dominating it, and as he closes his eyes, he hears Claude’s voice echo in his head:  _ No matter how different people are, or how different their customs are, at our core, we’re all still human. We thrive on connection, on shared emotions. If we can build bridges between people, then we can build a world where we truly understand each other _ .

Dimitri smiles as he gazes past the storyteller into the fire, and he hopes that this is the start of a bridge.

~*~

The seasons are changing too quickly. Only a week and a half after Dimitri arrives in Duscur, the last leaf falls off the last tree and the brisk autumn breeze becomes a cold winter wind. Dimitri has to leave, now, before the weather traps him up north with endless chills and frigid air that hurts to breathe.

Dimitri says his goodbyes to Dedue and Ashe and gives them each a firm hug, thankful that the strength from his Crest hides his weak, shaking arms from his friends. Ashe asks him to deliver a report to Ingrid, since he’s going to visit her anyway, so he tucks the letter into his cloak and then heads on his way.

If the ride to Duscur was bad, the ride to Garreg Mach is even worse. Every time his horse jostles him, his whole body aches. But now that he is alone, he doesn’t have to hide his illness. so at least his lungs no longer burn with built up pressure from swallowed coughs and held breaths. He can’t tell if he shivers from his fever or the cold anymore, and the taste of blood and flowers has become commonplace. He hopes he will survive long enough to spend some time with Ingrid. She deserves it.

Dimitri is around halfway between Duscur and Garreg Mach when a fire spell bursts from behind the trees and hits his horse squarely in the legs, causing it to panic. Dimitri jumps off his horse immediately, his weary eyes scanning the landscape for a sign of an enemy. With a mind addled by fever and a body ailed by sickness, Dimitri is in no condition for a fight; perhaps these are bandits who will simply take his gold and leave him alone.

“If you wish to rob me, I surrender. I will give you whatever you want,” Dimitri croaks, hoping this will at least incentivize his attacker to reveal themself.

“Oh, Princeling, we want so much more than just your money,” a familiar voice says from right behind him, and he stiffens and tries to turn around to attack, but his reflexes are slow and his body is failing him, and he feels the pain of a stab wound before he can even react. “You’ll be coming with us.”

Fire springs up from the ground, surrounding him, and dark tendrils of energy latch onto his ankles and wrists, restraining him in place. He doesn’t have the strength to break free; he hardly has the strength to remain standing. Dark spots explode in his vision as the dark magic swirls around him dangerously, sapping his energy.

As Dimitri clings desperately to his last bits of consciousness, he wonders if Ashe will forgive him for failing to deliver his message to Ingrid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I intentionally left a loose end in Finding Your Way Home so I could justify Dimitri being attacked and kidnapped here. Get ready for some angst :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dimitri continues to suffer in silence, but now he's also been captured by Cornelia, who is determined to kill him in the slowest and most painful way possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the fastest I've ever written a chapter, and it's 100% because it's pure angst. I've been waiting eagerly for this moment for almost a year!
> 
> Major warning here for graphic depictions of torture, injury, and captivity. If that's not for you, skip the section that starts "Dimitri spends a few hours shivering on the floor..." as well as the next section ("The next time they come for Dimitri") and resume reading at the following section, which starts with "'Hey Alois, did Ashe...'"
> 
> Thanks for reading!

Dimitri wakes up to a coughing fit. It’s not uncommon for him to wake up like this anymore, and hasn’t been for weeks. What is uncommon is the fact that he’s lying on a cold stone floor, and iron bars block him in on two sides. He’s in a dungeon, in a cell. He can’t see more than that before the coughing overtakes him and he squeezes his eye shut as his whole body is wracked with coughing. He covers his mouth just in time for the usual flower petals and blood to fall into his hand. He wants to vomit.

“My, my, doesn’t this situation seem familiar? Just me and you in a dungeon, but nobody is around to save you this time.” Dread sinks into Dimitri’s stomach and he shivers involuntarily as Cornelia’s voice echoes through the room. He forces himself to sit up against the wall so he can look at her through the bars in front of him. In the process, he coughs again, spraying blood and flower petals all over the floor.

“You and your friends destroyed my people and our plans. Hundreds of years of effort, all gone, thanks to you.” Cornelia’s voice is vicious, her face contorted in anger, but Dimitri is far too tired, too resigned, to respond. He stares at her blankly, confident that his death is assured either at her hands or because of his illness.

“I will kill you,” Cornelia says, savoring each word. “You will die a slow and painful death by my hand, and you will wish you had never been born— Oh, what’s this?” 

Cornelia steps into the light, and she reaches through the bars and picks up a single yellow flower petal. “The little Princeling is in love. Perhaps with the big and strong Claude von Riegan, who gave him the chance to heal?” She crushes the flower petal in her fist. “Well, then. Perhaps a change of plans is in order. I’ll kill you, but first…” Cornelia leans down so that her face is at his eye level and grins, showing all her teeth. “First, I will draw in the friends who are desperately searching for you, one by one, and I’ll kill them in front of you.”

Cornelia straightens, cackling. “Claude von Riegan’s blood will be on your hands. What better way to show your love for someone than to lead them to their death?”

Dimitri wants to yell that it will never work, that Claude is busy in Almyra proving to his father and to his people that he is ready to become king. He wants to rush at the iron bars and squeeze them apart, then strangle Cornelia with his bare hands.

But his head is throbbing, his chest feels like it’s being stabbed from the inside, and his mind is foggy with fever, so he does nothing as Cornelia waltzes out of the room, a satisfied smirk on her face.

~*~

Dimitri spends a few hours shivering on the floor, wrapping himself in his fur cloak in a vain attempt to keep himself warm, and then he gets a hard lesson in what his time in this prison will be like. Two masked men wearing all black come down the steps into the dungeon, and one of them opens the cell door and roughly shoves Dimitri to his feet and out of the cell. Dimitri doesn’t even try to run; he is overwhelmed by the realization that his wounds from being attacked still exist. The men drag him deeper into the dungeon to an open area with no cells. Dimitri’s vision is hazy and his mind is disoriented, but he can make out a short, human-sized stone slab right in front of him and a wooden table in the corner with an array of weapons.

One of the men holds Dimitri in place while the other rips Dimitri’s clothes from his body: first his shoes, then his cloak, then his shirt, then his pants. Dimitri lunges after the cloak— it was sewn by Mercedes, and it’s the only thing he has left to cling to— and the man smirks. “Oh, you like this one, eh? Maybe I’ll let you keep it if you put on a good show for the mistress.”

The other man pushes Dimitri down onto the stone slab and secures him to the table with cuffs. Dimitri flinches as his skin hits the cold stone, and he begins to shiver violently. The men take no notice, seemingly more concerned with what they’re about to do next.

The whip comes down on his back, and Dimitri screams. He doesn’t have enough brainpower to stop himself from reacting. The very act of screaming brings on another coughing fit, and suddenly, Dimitri is in hell. His lungs are burning from the coughing, his back becomes rawer with each subsequent lash from the whip, and his chest wounds reopen as his body convulses in pain. He doesn’t know how long they whip him, or how many lashes he takes. He screams until his voice is hoarse. He lets his tears fall freely. He’s tired, he’s been sick for weeks, he’s been trying to keep it all in, and now his body is in so much pain that it feels like death is going to come at any moment.

When Dimitri is finally thrown back into his cell, his whole body is so numb that he barely notices his cloak fluttering to the ground, covering his battered body. He crawls under it and cries himself to sleep

~*~

The next time they come for Dimitri, there are three of them: the two men from before, and a mage of some sort. Dimitri doesn’t wait for them to shove him to his feet and stands up shakily, nearly collapsing from exhaustion. He hasn’t slept well since arriving here, his rest constantly interrupted by coughing and nightmares, and he wasn’t eating well even before being imprisoned. It’s a wonder he can even stand without falling over.

They cuff him down to the table again, and Dimitri prepares himself for the whip again, or for some sort of electric or dark magic torture. Why else would they have a mage? Instead, he feels the warmth of healing magic fill his body, easing the soreness of his back. He leans in to the comfort, his body instinctively relaxing at the feeling of being healed, and he is so,  _ so _ confused. Why is Cornelia granting him this mercy? What would she have to gain from--

Dimitri cries out in pain as a knife is plunged into his back, and then another, and then a third. Dark magic pulses through his body, and his insides burn. The thorns in his chest dig deeper. He vomits up blood. Something cuts deep into his back over and over again. He isn’t even sure if he’s screaming or if it’s all in his head. And then, all at once, the pain is gone, and the healing magic is back, granting him one moment of respite.

He realizes with dread why Cornelia let a healer be present.

The cycle of torture and healing continues for what feels like days. By the end, Dimitri doesn’t remember what it’s like to taste anything other than blood and to feel anything other than pain.

~*~

“Hey, Alois, did Ashe send a letter that I missed? This letter mentions a report that I don’t remember ever getting,” Ingrid asks, trying to sound as casual as possible. 

“Hmm, I don’t think so. Why?” Alois says, oblivious to Ingrid’s mounting panic.

Ingrid grips the letter in her hands even tighter. “Well, this letter implies that Dimitri was planning on visiting me. But he’s not here.”

~*~

The ghosts are back, and they’re back with a vengeance. It’s no surprise, given the way Dimitri has grown used to bearing a daily torture session without fighting back. Anyone would be disappointed in how pitiful he looks as he gets whipped, stabbed, waterboarded, beaten.

“Tear Cornelia’s head from her shoulders,” Mother says, and isn’t that strange, because wasn’t she  _ friends _ with Cornelia? Dimitri vaguely remembers talking to Hapi about it, or maybe that was all in his head. He doesn’t know.

Stab. Heal. Stab. Heal.

“Kill them. Kill them all!” Mother roars. “Stop pretending to be this pathetic man and let out the beast inside you.”

No. No, he’d gotten rid of the beast. He’d proven to himself that the beast was just something he thought he was, not something he actually was. Right? Right?

“You can’t die here, you fool. If you do, Claude will still be lured into Cornelia’s trap trying to find you. You have to escape and let him know you’re okay,” Glenn says, and this is at least a sensible thought. Except there is no escape for Dimitri when he can hardly move a finger without whimpering in pain.

“Run away.  _ Run away and hide _ ,” Glenn hisses.

Stab. Heal. Stab. Heal. Twenty lashes.

“You’ve failed in your duties,” Father scolds. “Anything you’ve done until now will be for naught if you die here.”

Father is right. He’s always right. Dimitri is a failure. He should never have even tried to help Claude with his dream. How could he do anything to help anyone?

Stab. Heal. Branded with hot iron, burnt with hot coals. Stab. Heal.

Dimitri squeezes his eye shut, hoping it will chase the ghosts or the pain away. It does neither.

“You deserve this,” the ghosts of the dead whisper. “You deserve to suffer for the innocents you have killed. This is your penance.”

Dimitri knows that they are right. Even if it is at the hands of Cornelia, he deserves to pay for his mistakes. He doesn’t deserve the mercy of death.

Stab. Heal. Dark magic. Heal.

“If you resign yourself to your fate,” Glenn sneers, “you will be endangering Claude, and anyone else who comes for you.”

And that’s the kicker, really. Dimitri might deserve the excruciating pain he’s experiencing, but he can’t give up. If he gives up, his friends will search for him, and Cornelia will kill them.

“Stay alive,” Mother whispers.

“Stay alive,” Father urges.

“Stay alive,” Glenn insists.

So Dimitri struggles, and he coughs, and he sleeps, and he lives.

~*~

_ Claude breaks down the door and rushes into the room. His gaze falls on Dimitri, shriveled up behind iron bars, and he deftly picks the lock and swings open the door. “Dimitri,” he says, and kneels down next to him. “We’re here for you. We’re getting you out. Hold on, okay?” _

_ If Dimitri was better rested, maybe he’d have more inhibitions, but like this, he’s too exhausted to care. He edges closer to Claude, eager to feel his warmth. Claude lifts Dimitri onto his back, and Dimitri embraces him. _

_ “You’ve been so strong, Dimitri. I’m sorry we didn’t come sooner. But you’re okay now. We’ve got you. I’ve got you.” Claude carries Dimitri out of the cell and up the dungeon steps to the upper floor, to the outside, to freedom-- _

Dimitri wakes up gasping for breath, as he always does nowadays, and with tears pricking the corners of his eyes. He curls up under his cloak and cries, and cries, and cries, and wishes that he was in Claude’s arms.

~*~

“Another dud,” Sylvain says dully, walking into the war room looking as demoralized as they all felt.

Claude puts his head in his hands. Next to him, Hilda marks an ‘x’ on the giant map sprawled out in front of them over the site that Sylvain and Felix had investigated.. 

“Yuri’s supposed to come with a new batch of intel in a few minutes,” Hilda supplies hopefully.

“Let’s hope he’s got something for us,” Claude says grimly. “Because right now, we’re out of leads.”

~*~

Dimitri is used to seeing the dead, but now he’s seeing the living, too.

On better days, he only sees them in his sleep— Ingrid and Ashe coming to rescue him, or Annette and Mercedes healing his wounds and telling him it will be all right, or Felix and Sylvain beheading every last person who has tortured Dimitri— and they bring him comfort and give him the strength to keep going. He is not alone, they remind him. He only has to hold out a little longer.

But as time passes, Dimitri sees them while he’s awake. Claude runs down the steps and reaches through the bars to console Dimitri. His hand passes through Dimitri’s, and his shimmering form disappears. Felix bursts through the door, breaks the lock on the cell, and lifts Dimitri to his feet before fading away. Mercedes kneels down next to him, her hands glowing with white magic, but his pain does not cease to be. Dedue stands there as Dimitri is whipped and flayed and stabbed and cut open and sewn back together, giving Dimitri an encouraging smile, willing him to keep going, assuring him that backup will be there soon.

And what better indication that this Dedue is a product of his mind than the fact that he just watches, unable to intervene. The real Dedue would never just stand there, Dimitri thinks. Right?

Right?

Dimitri doesn’t know how many days have passed. It’s hard for him to gauge time because he doesn’t get hungry, not like a normal person, and his sleep is always fitful and short. The only way he can be sure that time is passing is that his wounds stop bleeding, the blood on the floor dries after every torture session, and his coughing and fever seem to be getting progressively worse.

“You deserve to be tortured,” Stepmother tells him as he is strapped down to the torture table yet again. “This is your punishment for being the monster that you are.”

“You  _ must _ be a monster,” Glenn adds. “Only a monster would still be alive after everything they’ve done to you.”

Dimitri’s eye squeezes shut as electricity courses through his body. He doesn’t have the energy to scream, and yet his voice is drawn out of him somehow.

“In letting Cornelia live, you have failed us. Kill her,” Father commands. Dimitri wants to. He wants to rip her head from her shoulders. He wants to cut off the arms of the people who are currently setting his body on fire with their cursed magic. He wants so desperately to destroy everything around him. Ha, it turns out the monster within him never did go away. Professor Manuela’s hard work and therapy was all for naught.

He clings to life only so that he can receive the pain that he deserves for slaughtering innocents on the battlefield, for hunting down Empire troops and brutally murdering them, for leaving his revenge incomplete, for daring to think that he could deserve the romantic love of another. Monsters don’t deserve love. Monsters don’t deserve kindness. Monsters should be left to rot in dungeons, like he is now.

When Dimitri sleeps, he sees Felix and Sylvain getting married with Ingrid as both the best man and the maid of honor. He sees Rodrigue leading Faerghus into an era of prosperity. He sees Dedue and Ashe gardening happily together in Duscur, and Mercedes and Annette teaching classes at Garreg Mach. He sees Claude being crowned, with everyone there to cheer him on. Everyone except him. He’s missing in every one of his dreams, because he’s dead. He’s dead, and all his friends move on. They forget that he ever existed, that he ever tainted their lives, and they’re happy.

Dimitri doesn’t stop wishing that his friends will save him, even as he knows that they won’t. Monsters don’t deserve to be saved.

~*~

Claude doesn’t spare the Agarthans a second thought. Sylvain, Felix, and Hilda are already rushing out in front of him, tearing them to pieces, and Marianne and Yuri are trailing behind, playing clean-up. Claude’s attention is fully on finding the dungeon, if this hideout has one, and hoping, praying, that they’re finally at the right place.

Goddess, please let it be the right one.

Claude darts past a fighter and ducks out of the way of a swordsman, silently thanking Teach for drilling evasion tactics into him so well. There’s a small hallway leading off from the main room, so Claude runs for it. At the end of the hall is a narrow cobblestone staircase, winding downwards into a basement. He can hear coughing echoing up the staircase. Claude’s heart beats faster and he quickens his steps. Someone is down there.

The basement is dark and small, with only two cells. Claude lights a torch with the fire starter he always keeps in his pocket and hangs it on the wall, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the new light. He walks over to the only cell that appears to be occupied. There is a dark, huddled shadow in the corner, and yellow flower petals litter the floor. Claude has to take a few deep breaths to steady himself as he fumbles to pick the lock. When the door finally swings open, the shadow raises a head towards the noise, and Claude clearly makes out the figure of a person shivering under a thick blue fur coat.

“Dimitri. Oh, thank the Goddess you’re here.” Claude rushes over to him and kneels down next to him, swallowing his happy tears. “Are you okay? Did they do anything to you?”

Dimitri coughs, and blood spurts out of his mouth and onto the floor. There’s crusted blood all around Dimitri and all over him, Claude realizes belatedly. He props Dimitri’s head up on his lap as Dimitri continues to cough and struggle for breath. He looks up at Claude, his gaze unfocused, and his eyebrows knit together in confusion.

“Claude?” Dimitri mumbles, and raises his hand to swat at the air. His hand drops before he even raises it above Claude’s waist. “Not real,” he decides, and rolls over to curl back up in a ball.

“Dimitri, I’m real. I’m here. We’re going to get you out of here,” Claude says urgently, his hands working to tear apart Dimitri’s blood-soaked undershirt and search for injuries. “Do you think you can drink a Vulnerary? I’ve got backup with me. Just hold on.” 

Dimitri doesn’t even react to his voice, but at least he doesn’t resist as Claude forcibly turns him to lie on his back again. There is a huge gash across his chest, and it is definitely infected. There’s a plethora of smaller wounds lining Dimitri’s skin, a mix of reopened scars and new marks. Claude marvels at the fact that he’s still alive, and then takes the cap off a Vulnerary. Marianne is on her way, but she isn’t as nimble as Claude, so it will take her time to get past the enemy forces.

“Dimitri, can you open your mouth for me? You need to drink this,” Claude says, and gently pushes Dimitri up into a sitting position. Dimitri moans in pain and begins coughing again, his hands instinctively flying to his abdomen to nurse the giant wound that pulses as he coughs.

Claude grimaces and waits for the coughing to stop, then shoves the Vulnerary into Dimitri’s face. Dimitri pushes it away and turns his head to the side.

“No more,” he begs quietly, his eye squeezed shut. “Please, no more.”

Claude wonders what these bastards have been feeding him, if this is Dimitri’s reaction to a healing potion.

Dimitri continues to cough violently, his whole body shaking, until finally, a full yellow flower flies out of Dimitri’s mouth onto the floor. He falls back into Claude’s arms, all tension gone from his body. Claude’s blood goes cold as his thoughts drift back to a year and some months ago, when he caught Marianne coughing up flower petals in the stables.

“Dimitri,” Claude says gently, trying not to let his sudden fear creep into his voice, “How long have you had Hanahaki disease?”

Dimitri shakes his head. “Not important,” he mutters. “Too late.”

“Who is it? Who do you love so much you’d die for them?” Claude asks urgently, clinging to Dimitri’s body a little too tightly. “I’ll take you to them right away. We can fix this.”

Dimitri coughs again. More blood-soaked flower petals leave his mouth. “No. Needs to become... king. No distractions.”

Claude’s grip tightens. Tears sting in his eyes as he fully comprehends Dimitri’s words. There’s nobody else it could be except... “I’m right here, Dimitri. I love you. I love you so much, I’m here—”

Dimitri laughs hollowly. “You’re not real,” he says, giving Claude such a peaceful and convinced smile that it breaks Claude’s heart. “Claude... wouldn’t say that.”

“I’m real. Please, Dimitri—”

Dimitri pushes Claude away weakly, and a second later, Claude becomes aware of a deep, sharp pain in his abdomen. He looks down and there’s blood soaking his shirt. Not Dimitri’s blood, but his. That’s not right. How...?

“That was such a touching performance, Riegan. It almost makes me regret what I’m about to do next.”

Claude nocks an arrow and releases it blindly towards the sound of the voice. He’s trying to hold on, but the pain is spreading like venom, and Goddess, it’s been a while since he’s taken a hit like this. Any closer to his heart, and the wound might have killed him instantly. He wills his Crest to activate, squeezing his eyes shut, and relies on the sound of footsteps to tell him when to roll out of the way of a follow-up swing. He’s starting to get dizzy from blood loss, but he swears he hears another lighter, more familiar set of footsteps coming down the stairs.

_ Marianne _ . There was still hope.

“Get back-up!” Claude yells, hoping his senses haven’t failed him yet. He doesn’t bother to open his eyes, knowing his vision will be spotty at best. “I’m being att—”

Something hits the back of his head, and everything goes dark.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dimitri is sick with Hanahaki disease, and nobody knows who he’s in love with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m posting this from my phone so sorry if there’s typos!
> 
> November has been really rough! I didn’t mean to leave y’all on a cliffhanger for so long. I wanted to get the rest of the fic out in this chapter, but it became a lot longer than I expected, so I’m breaking it up. Somehow my dimiclaude fics always become about the childhood quartet...
> 
> Thanks for reading!

When Ingrid was younger, she was confident that grieving for someone was the worst feeling in the world because all she could think about was how she could have stopped them from dying. Now, as she sits next to Dimitri’s bed, she wonders if this— watching him die— is worse, because she’s just as helpless.

Dimitri is dying of Hanahaki disease, and nobody knows who he’s in love with. 

Leonie hadn’t even noticed that he was sick. Felix and Sylvain had thought he had a cold and was getting better. Ashe and Dedue at least knew that he was ill, but they hadn’t picked up on his yearning.

They’d been so stupid. If everyone hadn’t been stressed and overwhelmed with trying to run an entire continent despite having fewer than thirty years of life experience, Ingrid might have yelled at all of them because one of her closest friends was dying and they’d all missed it. But as much as she wants to scream at them, especially her two idiots Felix and Sylvain, she knows it isn’t fair. They must be beating themselves up over it already.

So instead, Ingrid sits next to Dimitri’s bed, ignoring the mound of paperwork waiting for her in her office. He had been en route to Garreg Mach when he’d been captured. He’d been on his way to spend time with her. So damn it all, she’s going to sit here, even if he never wakes up again.

Ingrid sits, and she waits.

On the other side of the bed, Mercedes kneels, her eyebrows knitted in deep concentration. Ingrid can only imagine how exhausted she must be; she had reported soon after they’d brought Dimitri back that practically all of his wounds were infected and his Hanahaki was in its final stages. It was all she could do just to keep him alive, to buy him some time.

Ingrid is not ready to say goodbye, so she sits.

Dimitri does not look peaceful. He tosses and turns, face twisted with pain as he coughs even in his sleep. Flower petals fall from his lips and scatter across the floor. Ingrid sweeps them up every now and then because it gives her something to do.

Hours later, although Ingrid does not know how many, Dimitri briefly wakes from his fitful sleep. Despite the gashes across his back and chest, he sits himself up and immediately begins to cough, his body jerking back and forth involuntarily with each cough. He spits out two giant yellow flowers and then falls back against the bed limply, his eye half-closed. His gaze is unfocused as he slowly looks around the room. It takes him a few seconds to notice her.

“Ing…” he mumbles, lifting his arm slightly as if to reach out to her. Ingrid takes his hand in both of hers without hesitation.

“I’m here, Dimitri. I’m here. What do you need?” Ingrid says slowly, firmly, making sure to enunciate each syllable in case Dimitri is drifting in and out of consciousness.

Dimitri grasps at her hand, his expression morphing from pain into confusion and back into pain. “...re y’real?” Dimitri wheezes before launching into another coughing fit. Another whole flower comes out of his mouth. “Go… don’t waste your time. With me.” Dimitri’s speech is getting more and more strained and rushed as he continues, but his voice is urgent, and Ingrid blinks back tears.

“Your Highness, you are an idiot,” Ingrid says, lapsing back into her old habits before she can correct herself. “I’m here because I want to be. I will continue to be here because I want to be. I’m not wasting my time.”

Dimitri starts to cough again, and Mercedes begins to glow brighter as she places her hands on his back. Dimitri flinches and pulls away. “No. Stop. Please.”

“You’re safe. It’s okay,” Ingrid says, squeezing Dimitri’s hand gently.

“I’m going to make the pain go away, Dimitri, okay?” Mercedes says, trying again to gently lay her hands on Dimitri’s back. 

Dimitri shakes his head feverishly. “Not again,” he whispers. “Not again, not again, not—”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Mercedes says calmly. She moves into Dimitri’s view. “Nobody is going to hurt you. Can you trust me?”

Dimitri tilts his head slightly to look at her. “Real…?” Dimitri squints and then shakes his head. “It’s the torturers,” he mumbles. “Heal and hurt, heal and hurt. Don’t want it. Don’t…”

Ingrid wants to say many things in that moment, but Dimitri is asleep again, his breath rising, catching, and falling in an unsteady and heavily hindered rhythm. Ingrid wants to keep sitting there, to watch him  _ live _ , as if that will somehow stop him from dying. It’s only when Yuri comes by and lays a soft hand on her shoulder that she finally turns away.

“They did something to him,” she says darkly. “Something bad. He tried to stop Mercedes from healing him.”

“I’ll look into it. For now, you need rest,” Yuri says gently.

“He’s  _ dying _ ,” she whispers tearfully, standing up just so she can bury her face in Yuri’s shoulder.

“Sitting here won’t fix that.”

“But if he dies-- I want to have been there with him.”

“I know,” Yuri says quietly, with the expression of someone who had watched too many friends die, and Ingrid cries in his arms. “I know.”

~*~

Mercedes knows that she should be conserving her strength so she can keep Dimitri alive as long as possible. Annette and Flayn have both offered to switch out with her already, and Mercedes politely declined both times. Her biological brother died in her arms out of stubborn refusal to switch sides. She is not going to let Dimitri, who reminds her so much of Emile, die, too. She won’t. She  _ won’t _ .

Besides, the other healers have their hands full with Claude, anyway. Claude had taken a very, very bad stab wound, and while his chances of survival are much higher than Dimitri’s, Marianne has been struggling to stabilize him all day. Hilda sits next to her to give her moral support. Annette sits next to Mercedes and does the same. Mercedes thinks that after this is all over, she’ll bake some cookies with Annie to thank her.

At some point, Linhardt and Caspar come in and Linhardt helps Marianne. Mercedes doesn’t even know how they learned about the Dimitri and Claude situation, given how impossible it was to contact either of them. Maybe Yuri had managed to locate them after all.

It doesn’t matter. Mercedes doesn’t have the brain space to waste dwelling on this. She pours everything she has into her faith magic. She wills Dimitri to live, wills his lungs to keep taking in air, wills his blood to clot and his skin to knit together and close.

She forces herself to have faith that Dimitri will live, and hopes that her faith is strong enough to make it happen.

~*~

That fool. That  _ idiot _ . Just when Felix thought there was hope that maybe the real Dimitri was back-- not the facade he put on for others, not the boar he’d become, but  _ Dimitri _ \-- he had to get captured by  _ Cornelia _ and nearly killed. And he was sick with Hanahaki disease on top of everything, and probably had been for weeks. Felix hates Sylvain for being so goddamn beautiful that he distracted Felix from questioning Dimitri further. Felix hates himself for not noticing that something was wrong. How could he be so  _ stupid _ ?

Felix blows off steam in the training hall. His presence is more than enough to scare away any of this year’s Officer Academy students, especially with how viciously he attacks the training dummies. At some point, Ingrid comes to join him, her cheeks streaked with tears, and they spar for a while. Felix doesn’t notice the time pass until Sylvain brings him dinner and he realizes that it’s gotten dark. He isn’t even tired. His anger hasn’t dampened. He hasn’t felt this emotionally volatile in a long time, in years.

Since Glenn died and Dimitri became someone he didn’t recognize.

“It’s late. Do you want to go see Dimitri?” Sylvain says gently, a few hours after it’s gotten dark and Ingrid has already left. He’s just been sitting here patiently, watching Felix stab this training dummy.

Felix does not want to talk. Felix does not want to see Dimitri. Felix wants to scream until this feeling goes away. He keeps running through drills, ignoring Sylvain.

“If he dies--”

“Dimitri is not going to die.” Felix says it like it’s a fact even though he himself doesn’t believe it.

“Felix.”

Felix finally lowers his sword and turns to Sylvain. “Fine. Let’s go visit him, after I take a bath.”

Both of them know that Felix is stalling by insisting on a bath. Sylvain lets it go anyway, nodding. “I’ll be waiting for you outside the infirmary.”

“Right.” Felix puts his training sword back, towels off, and heads to the bath. He spends the entirety of his time soaking in the warm water and despairing over all the ways that this interaction could go wrong, just like every single conversation he’s had with Dimitri in the last five years. When he realizes he can’t stall any longer, he towels off, dresses himself, and heads to the infirmary. Sylvain is waiting, as he’d promised.

“Ready?” Sylvain asks.

Felix is not ready. Felix will never be ready. Every conversation with Dimitri feels like a battle that Felix cannot win.

He pushes open the door to the infirmary.

Ingrid and Annette are sitting next to Dimitri’s bed, and Mercedes is asleep in the next bed over. If Dedue and Ashe were here, it would be a shitty Blue Lions reunion, except there’s very little to be happy about. Dimitri is so  _ skinny _ , so gaunt. His normally muscular frame is lean and scrawny; his skin is pale, and he almost looks like a human skeleton. Felix wants to look away. Based on Sylvain’s grimace, he is just as shaken.

“He’s been awake for a little bit,” Annette says softly. “But he keeps going in and out of being lucid.”

“That’s fine,” Sylvain responds. He takes Felix by the hand and leads him to the unoccupied side of the bed. “Hey, Dimitri. Remember us?”

Dimitri opens his eye at the noise and looks around, gaze unfocused. Finally, he meets Sylvain’s gaze, and he furrows his eyebrows. “Syl…? Fe…?”

“Yeah. We’re here,” Sylvain says, smiling sadly.

Dimitri’s focus slides to Felix, and he looks so scared, so small. “Sorry…” He coughs a little bit, and blood dribbles down his lips. Annette reaches for a washcloth to wipe the blood away. “’m still a monster.”

Felix’s eyes widen. This is not what he had expected. He thought they’d already gotten past this. “You’re not-- you were never--” The words are coming too quickly. Felix can’t sort through them fast enough. “What do you mean?”

“I want…” Dimitri coughs, and this time, it takes a lot longer for him to recover enough to speak again. The coughs shake his whole feeble frame, and yellow flowers fall out of his mouth at an alarming rate. Fuck,  _ fuck _ . The panic rises in Felix’s throat. This is bad. He’s  _ dying _ . “Their heads. The masked... people.”

“The people who captured you?” Ingrid asks gently, but her eyes flare with anger.

“Mhm…” Dimitri falls back against his pillow, exhausted just from the effort of a few words, and his eye droops shut. “They keep… hurting me... I’m too weak.”

Felix’s fists clench at his sides, and he resists the urge to scream. “What did they do to you?” he says through gritted teeth.

Dimitri opens his eye again and looks at Felix, confusion apparent in his gaze. “I deserve it,” he says raspily. “Deserve… to die.”

“No you don’t. Dimitri, listen to me. You’re not a monster for wanting to hurt the people who hurt you. That’s completely normal,” Ingrid says urgently. Annette puts a hand on Ingrid’s shoulder, and Ingrid flinches, but lowers her voice. “Dimitri. You’re not a monster. Do you hear me?”

Dimitri chuckles halfheartedly. “Ing… no lying....”

“You’re not a monster.” Felix hopes that maybe, if he says it, Dimitri won’t be able to deny it so easily because Felix doesn’t lie, not to Dimitri.

“Mmm…” Dimitri shivers. He opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again. “Fe, can I… have a hug? ...Don’t… deserve it, but… cold.”

Felix looks at Sylvain, who nudges him with his shoulder in turn. Dimitri is looking at him. Dimitri wants… a hug. From him. Like when they were kids. Felix awkwardly kneels down to give Dimitri a hug. It’s hard given the way Dimitri is barely able to sit up in bed, but he does his best. Dimitri clings to him desperately. Felix suddenly doesn’t want to let go.

And as Felix looks at him, shivering and feverish, he can’t help but remember years and years ago how when Felix was ill, he’d cuddle with Dimitri in bed and he’d get Dimitri sick too, but Dimitri didn’t care because he wanted to make Felix feel better, and he’d hold Felix and pile blankets on top of the two of them and--

Tears are falling down Felix’s cheeks. He hates this. He hasn’t cried in front of people since-- well, since he was a kid, since he last got under the sheets with Dimitri and sought his warmth.

Why is Dimitri so convinced that he deserves nothing? When did that start? How did Felix miss it?

“Dimitri, do you want Felix to stay with you?” Sylvain says effortlessly, picking up the conversation when Felix doesn’t know how to, as always.

Dimitri’s eye widens, and he looks back at Felix. “Is that okay?” he whispers.

“Yes,” Felix says, perhaps more fiercely than he’d intended.

Sylvain starts pushing an empty bed next to Dimitri’s. Ingrid gets up to help. Annette gestures for Felix to come to the other side of the bed so that Ingrid and Sylvain can work. Felix lets go of Dimitri and stands up slowly so that Dimitri can track him with his gaze, so that he knows that Felix isn’t going anywhere. Dimitri’s energy is starting to flag, and his eyelid is drooping, but he still watches Felix desperately, as if he believes that at any moment, Felix could disappear.

Felix’s head is spinning from anger and self-loathing and dread. He did this to Dimitri. He made Dimitri think he was alone. He—

No, not now. Felix pushes all those thoughts to the back of his head. Dimitri needs him to be calm, so he’ll be calm. This is a battlefield of sorts, and he has to fulfill his role. 

Sylvain and Ingrid finish pushing the beds together, and Felix climbs into the empty bed. Instantly, Dimitri scoots closer to Felix, his whole body shaking with fever and cold. Felix shifts so that Dimitri’s head is resting on his shoulder, and he almost reels back at how warm Dimitri is, a stark contrast to how cold he looks. Fevers are weird. No, this whole thing is weird. Felix is cuddling with Dimitri like when they were kids, except Dimitri looks like a corpse and Felix is not the starry-eyed child he’d once been.

But Felix still feels the urge to help Dimitri, and Dimitri still needs the reassurance that he is not alone, so maybe things aren’t so different after all.

Dimitri’s breathing slows as he falls asleep next to Felix, and Felix gives Sylvain a panicked look. “What do I do?” he hisses.

“Stay with him,” Sylvain says softly, a fond smile on his face.

“It will help him realize that this is real. He has been having doubts ever since he woke up this morning,” Mercedes adds, relief flooding her voice. “This was the most lucid he’s been.”

“Mercie, maybe you can take a break now. I’ll wake you if something changes,” Annette says, brown eyes filled with worry. “You’ve been working yourself too hard.”

Mercedes sighs wearily and looks around at each of them one by one, then nods. “I leave him in your hands.”

“We won’t let anything happen to him,” Ingrid says firmly.

“I’m not going to let him die thinking he’s alone,” Felix says, surprising himself.

“Yeah. He can’t die yet. Not ‘till we’ve gotten that through his thick skull,” Sylvain agrees.

“Do you hear that, Dimitri? You’re not alone. You have friends all around you, and we all want you to be happy,” Annette says, running a hand through Dimitri’s hair.

And maybe Felix imagines it, but for a moment, it looks like Dimitri is smiling.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claude schemes, because that's what he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had most of this chapter in my drafts for weeks, but I struggled to write the bits that were missing. Finally, I decided it was better to get something out that wasn't completely perfect but still did the job because I didn't want to leave y'all hanging forever. Thanks for reading, and stay safe <3

Claude sits up way too quickly, gasping for breath. He had been in the dungeon, fighting Cornelia, and Dimitri—

“If you try to jump out of bed, I will be forced to call Hilda for assistance.” Claude turns towards the source of the voice to find Linhardt giving him a weary look; if Claude didn’t know him as well as he did, he might not have been able to distinguish between Linhardt’s usual sleepiness and his current ragged exhaustion. He’d been working hard to keep Claude alive, if the sharp pain in Claude’s abdomen was anything to go by.

“You might need to call her anyway. I need her advice,” Claude says, struggling to keep his panic out of his voice.

“Well, it’s almost time for her to take her shift, anyway. She’ll be here soon,” Linhardt says indifferently. “Really, Claude, did you have to go and almost die on us? That was rather inconsiderate of you.”

Claude chuckles. “Trust me, it wasn’t part of the plan.”

“Cornelia’s been taken care of, by the way,” Caspar chips in from behind Linhardt. “Hapi and Balthus can give you the details.”

“Great.” Claude is ashamed to admit that she wasn’t the forefront concern on his mind. “And Dimitri? How is he?” His voice trembles despite his attempts to remain calm.

“Still hanging in there. He’s a fighter,” Caspar says way too enthusiastically for the subject matter.

Apparently, Claude looks relieved because Linhardt says, “Oh, was Dimitri’s condition that surprising to you? I would have thought you would have anticipated his illness, given that you’ve seen him more than any of us in the last year.” 

Linhardt doesn’t mean any harm by it, but his words sting. Claude really  _ should _ have noticed that something was wrong. He should have pushed harder, should have asked around, should have—

“No offense to Dimitri, but I would have expected him to be a lot worse at hiding something like this,” Claude says, voice strained.

“Ah, yes, he does wear his heart on his sleeve. I  _ do _ find it curious that he is so convinced that his lover of choice will not reciprocate. Who  _ wouldn’t _ want to marry the former crown prince of Faerghus?” Linhardt says casually. Claude kind of wants to strangle him.

“Linhardt, don’t harass a wounded man! He can’t fight back!” Hilda scolds, presumably from the doorway. Claude doesn’t have to turn to face her to recognize her laid back voice, although she sounds worried for a change.

Linhardt gives Hilda a quizzical look but nods. “I suppose even our fearless leader can have his confidence shaken from time to time. Well, no matter. I’m sure you’ll figure out the right way to help Dimitri soon enough. I’m off to take a nap.”

“See ya later, Claude!” Caspar says with a wave, and the pair disappears from Claude’s field of vision as they head to the door. A few seconds later, Hilda sits down on one side of the bed, and Marianne sits down on the other.

“Sorry, Claude,” Hilda says, genuinely apologetic. “I wanted to be here when you woke up, but Cyril and Lysithea forced us out of the room, and you know how forceful they can be.”

Claude takes a moment to imagine Lysithea threatening to burn the room down with dark magic, or Cyril forcibly carrying people out of the room one by one, and he grins. “Nice to know that they’re keeping this place running smoothly.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t die, by the way. If Cornelia had hit you any closer to your heart, Lorenz and I would be writing the world’s trickiest diplomatic letter to Almyra right now,” Hilda says, giving Claude a sour look. “What were you thinking, running off without backup like that?”

“I didn’t know Cornelia would be there herself,” Claude protests, but he knows it’s a weak argument. The fact of the matter was that for possibly the first time in his life, Claude von Riegan was  _ not _ thinking. Things had been desperate; they’d checked so many of Yuri’s leads and failed to locate Dimitri for almost two weeks. It had been pure luck that they’d finally found him.

“Be honest with yourself, Claude,” Hilda said, and what a hypocrite she’s being, because she’s  _ never _ honest with herself  _ or _ anyone else, but she’s right.

“I was worried about him. I’m  _ still _ worried about him. I…” Claude swallows hard as his mind drifts back to Cornelia’s prison, to Dimitri’s frail, dying body in his arms. “I care about him a lot more than I thought I did.”

Hilda crosses her arms and waits expectantly. Marianne opens her mouth to say something, but Hilda reaches out to stop her, a smirk on her face. She wants to hear him say it, he realizes with an inward groan. Fine.

“I love him,” he says quietly.

“Bingo,” Hilda says with a grin, thrilled by Claude’s admission of something she’d probably known for longer than he had. “Now, the real question is, does Dimitri love you back? He definitely loves  _ someone _ a whole lot to have such a bad case of Hanahaki.”

Claude thinks back to Dimitri’s words when Claude had found him. Had Claude misinterpreted those words out of wishful thinking? Or… no, it wasn’t like Claude to mistrust his intuition like this. “I think so. I tried to tell him how I felt, but he thought I was just a hallucination.”

“Oh, no. That will make this harder,” Marianne says with dismay.

“Yeah, what a pain.” Hilda thinks for a moment, a rare thing for her to do. “I guess our options are to hope his fever breaks soon so he’ll be a little more lucid, or trick him into believing Claude’s confession while he has a fever.”

“I don’t think we have time to wait it out, but he’s not going to believe anything while he still thinks that he’s having hallucinations. He probably thinks he’s still back in Cornelia’s prison. That should be our first step: convincing him that this is real,” Claude reasons. “I’m going to need help, though. If he sees me before then, he’s going to think I’m a hallucination. I’ll have to time my appearance just right.”

“Whose help do you need? I can round them up for you,” Hilda says.

A plan starts to form in Claude’s head. He lets out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. “Okay. Here’s the plan…”

~*~

Dimitri opens his eye slowly, and the first thing he notices is that he’s on a bed. No, no, he must be making that up. It’s wishful thinking. The people around him, they must be a product of his mind, too. He can’t think straight enough to make their faces out clearly. His head hurts and his mind is foggy. He has to work to stay awake.

“Dimitri, how’re you feeling?” He thinks that it’s Hilda who asks the question. That’s strange. He’s never hallucinated  _ her _ before. He doesn’t dislike Hilda, but they were never particularly close.

“Hilda…?” he murmurs. His voice is a lot weaker than he remembers it being.

“Yup! The one and only,” Hilda says cheerfully, and Dimitri shakes his head. He doesn’t think he could recreate her voice that well.

“Why’re you…?” Dimitri coughs before he can finish the sentence. His throat burns.

“We’re watching over you in shifts, and it’s my turn. That’s all there is to it,” Hilda says dismissively. “Are you in pain? Flayn's here, too. She can help.”

“Flayn?” Dimitri frowns. He’d never been particularly close with her, either, although they’d had one or two notable conversations. He closes his eye as another coughing fit overtakes him, and he tries to think. Is he so desperate for help that his mind is grasping at straws for people to conjure up? Or, maybe… this is real?

Dimitri sits himself up in bed, ignoring the wave of dizziness that washes over him. He looks around. There’s two curtain dividers around his bed, so he can’t see much of the rest of the room, but he’s almost certain now that he recognizes where he is (or where he’s dreaming he is). 

“Are we at Garreg Mach?” Dimitri asks.

“Mhm. We brought you here after we rescued you. It was the closest nearby settlement with staffed healers,” Hilda explains, twirling one of her pigtails absentmindedly.

“Oh, is he awake?” Flayn calls from somewhere outside the dividers. Dimitri can just barely make out her voice.

“Yes, he is.” Dimitri doesn’t recognize the voice of the person who speaks, and he has to look at them a moment before he’s able to place the face.

“Yuri?”

“Oh, you remember me. I’m flattered.” Yuri winks. “I’d love to chat, but you should probably save your strength for people who matter to you more.”

Balthus pops his head in. “Yuri, you’re needed. Oh, hey, Dimitri. Hope you’re feeling better.”

Dimitri rubs his eye with the palm of his hand. He’s growing less and less convinced that this is a dream conjured up by his mind. Yuri and Balthus leave the area just as Flayn enters, her arms full of medicine bottles.

“Good afternoon, Dimitri. How are you feeling?” Flayn says as she walks up to his bed. She places the bottles on the bedside table one by one. “Your case of Hanahaki disease is quite severe, but the infection from your wounds has passed, and the sleep should certainly have done you some good. Are you feeling more alert?”

Dimitri nods, not trusting his ability to speak without coughing again.

“Excellent,” Flynn says happily.

“I’ll go let everyone know,” Hilda says, and she leaves. It’s just him and Flayn, now.

“There is something I want to discuss with you, and I want to make absolutely sure that you understand what I have to say.” Flayn sits down on a nearby stool. “Dimitri, do you intend to die from your Hanahaki disease?”

Dimitri doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. Flayn takes one look at him and sighs heavily.

“I cannot stop you if that is what you choose to do. Before you commit to your choice, though, I would like to share something with you.” Flayn takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, her voice suddenly mournful. “In the past, when I was younger, I wanted to use my healing abilities to help people. When the war happened, there were too many people to help and not enough healers to help them, and I overextended myself severely. I fell asleep for hundreds of years, and Father was left alone. He must have been so lonely and sad all by himself, and I could not be there with him because I had never once considered how my actions would affect him.”

Flayn opens her eyes. “If you die, there will be consequences you cannot predict, Dimitri. I ask that you seriously consider who you might hurt with your death. Unlike my healing slumber, you will not wake up from this choice.” Flayn pauses, and she reaches over with a handkerchief to wipe the tears from Dimitri’s eye, tears that he hadn’t even noticed. “You’re not ready, are you?” she asks softly.

Dimitri is not ready to die. It’s a truth that he’s been running from since he first resolved not to tell anyone about his disease, about his unrequited love. It would be easy if he believed that nobody cared for him, and maybe while he was alone in that prison, he thought that might be true. But the fact that he is here, in the infirmary at Garreg Mach, meant that someone had found him and rescued him, even if he couldn’t remember it clearly. And people had been taking care of him, healing his injuries, keeping him alive. So maybe, maybe--

“I can’t tell him,” Dimitri croaks, his voice dry from misuse. “It would never work, anyway.”

“I don’t know, I think he’d probably want to know if you were dying,” a familiar voice-- cocky, self-assured, playful-- says, and Dimitri openly sobs. He’s wanted to hear this voice for weeks, has desperately missed it. It’s embarrassing how relieved he is to hear it now.

“ _ Claude _ ,” Dimitri chokes out.

Claude walks into Dimitri’s field of vision, and a mix of relief and dread settle in Dimitri’s stomach. Now he’ll get the rejection he deserves, and then he can at least console his friends with the knowledge that he didn’t die without trying first.

“I’m here,” Claude says gently, and Flayn takes that as her cue to leave, offering up her now-empty stool for Claude to sit down. Claude takes Dimitri’s hand in his and squeezes it gently. “I’m here.”

“You’re real, aren’t you?” Dimitri whispers, raising a hand to touch Claude’s face.

Claude nods and holds Dimitri’s hand against his cheek. His hand doesn’t pass through Claude. Claude’s real. This is  _ real _ .

“Claude…” The tears are coming too fast, and Dimitri can’t hold them back. He coughs violently as he struggles to breathe through his sobbing, but Claude sits there patiently, calmly, waiting.

Once Dimitri’s tears have slowed down, Claude’s expression turns serious. “So, word on the street is that you have Hanahaki disease. Care to fill me in?”

“I…” Dimitri winces. He can tell from Claude’s tone of voice that he already knows everything. “I didn’t want you to be distracted, or to waste time trying to find a cure.”

“And what if your love isn’t unrequited?” Claude asks, and despite the sharpness of the question, his voice is kind and gentle. “Here, I know it’s hard for you to talk, so let me help you out. Hanahaki disease isn’t about whether the love actually  _ is _ unrequited. It’s about whether the victim  _ thinks _ the love is unrequited.”

Oh.  _ Oh _ .

Dimitri doesn’t want to get his hopes up, but there’s a fluttering in his chest now.

“If you’d just  _ talked  _ to me-- or to anyone--” Dimitri winces as he picks up on the sheer amount of pain in Claude’s voice. Claude shakes his head. “Dimitri, is it so hard for you to believe that I might love you, too?”

Dimitri’s heart is in his throat. Even if he could speak, he doesn’t know what he would say.

“I know, I kind of screwed up by not saying something sooner. But I just… I didn’t want to throw something else into the mix when you were trying to recover. And, well, I didn’t really realize it myself until after you’d left. You were always this puzzle I couldn’t hope to solve, no matter what I did. I spent years trying to figure you out, even during the war. And when you-- when you agreed to come with me to Almyra, I thought maybe I’d finally figure the puzzle out, I’d finally understand you. And now, I think I do.”

Claude swallows, and for the first time in his life, he looks visibly vulnerable, unsure, anxious.

“Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, you are the kindest and most genuine person I know. You put all of yourself into everything you do. You wear your heart on your sleeve. You have this kind-hearted optimism and hope that makes me feel like anything is possible. When I am with you, when I’m working alongside you, I feel like my dreams aren’t so far away. I-- I love you, Dimitri, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you by my side.”

Even before Claude finishes, Dimitri feels the vines in his lungs loosen up and the piercing pain soften into a dull ache. It doesn’t all go away, but he can  _ breathe _ . It’s better than it’s been in weeks. He hadn’t even remembered what it could feel like to take such a deep breath.

“I love you,” Dimitri says tearfully, completely at a loss for words.

“Yeah, I know, because you almost died for it,” Claude teases, but the worry is still clear on his face. “Man, Sylvain wasn’t kidding. You really are a crybaby. Are you feeling better?”

Dimitri laughs. Oh, it feels  _ wonderful _ to be able to laugh. “Yes. I can breathe again.”

“Good.” Claude lets the tension out of his shoulders. “Marianne had Hanahaki disease a year and a half ago, and it took her a while to recover. Her case wasn’t as bad as yours because we caught it early, but it didn’t go away fully until she actually,  _ truly _ believed that Hilda loved her, too.”

Dread pools in Dimitri’s stomach. Is he even capable of believing so wholly that someone-- let alone someone as kind and  _ good _ as Claude-- could love him? “I see. I… I will try my best.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m not going to let you forget it. After all, I have to woo you properly, right?” Claude says with a wink.

Dimitri’s face flushes red at the thought of Claude buying him extravagant gifts and writing him ridiculous poems and professing his love at every available moment. “No. Please, don’t.”

“Almyran customs are a lot less drawn out,” Claude assures him. “And anyway, that’s in the future. For now, you need to get some rest. You’ve been through a lot.” Claude ruffles his hair, and Dimitri melts.

As Claude pulls his hand away, Dimitri reaches out impulsively and grabs it. “Stay,” he murmurs, his eyelid already drooping shut. “Please.”

“All right,” Claude says fondly and returns to stroking Dimitri’s hair. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Dimitri drifts off to sleep and hopes that this is not a dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it! I can't guarantee anything, but I'd like to write an epilogue to wrap this up. If I do, I'll post it as the next chapter to this fic. But for now, thanks for sticking with this to the end!
> 
> Edit: I totally forgot I wrote a short one-shot that happens after chapter 7. It's not an epilogue, really, so I'm going to post it as the next fic in the series.


End file.
